A Weekend at Eurogamer – Sunday 30th September 2012

Today, Eurogamer ends for another year and what a weekend it’s been. My feet hurt, my weight has dropped (I hoped) and there’s still so much I wanted to play, but alas, we can’t always get what we wanted. But without further ado, here is my day.
I walked through the doors and instantly headed on over to ZombiU; assuming it’d be about an hours wait, but how wrong I was. About an hour and a half went by and whilst I was still in the queue, I was actually given the opportunity to try the Wii U panoramic view; it basically shows off the Wii U compatibilities where you can see an entire environment in 360 view, which I think is absolutely fantastic. The controller fit so well in my hands; it was really surprising just to feel how comfortable it was as I thought both analogue sticks being at the top would feel awkward; in fact it felt so much more better than the PS3 or Xbox 360 controller.
Finally, after 2 hours and 30 minutes of waiting, I had the chance to play ZombiU. Now the controls do feel a little sluggish, but when you get into it, it becomes one of the most intense games you’ll ever play. The demo had you playing as a random character and the mission was to reach the Tower of London. Zombies could be lurking anywhere, and any loud noises such as a gun could cause them to run at you. For some unknown reasons, some zombies have gas tanks on them, so shooting them can cause a massive explosion. You have to be careful when entering your inventory, because Zombies could be RIGHT behind you; I learned that the hard way. When entering water, you can’t fight because you need to have your bag above you to keep all electronics dry, which is something you don’t get in zombie games; it’s usually “everything can work even if it’s been in water”. Finally I also managed to try the panoramic function where you used your scanner to spot things worth noting, including any doors or possible inventory locations and other notable objects.
Thanks to a Wii U staff member, he managed to sneak me into the main Wii U attractions. I only wanted to play one of the games available; Rayman Legends. At first, I played with the Wii U pro controller, where I would be the one moving the main character around the environment, jumping on ledges and picking up Lums. The pro controller, like the main controller, also felt extremely comfortable (think of the Xbox 360 controller except the analogue sticks are at the top). The other player had the Wii U main controller where the player on the main controller would be in charge of guiding the first player through the environment, cutting ropes to block off spikes and spinning objects by tilting the controller; this is what co-op is all about, not asking your friend to help you shoot up enemies.
Afterwards I decided to try out Warface once again, but this time with PVE, which involved 5 players making their way through a map to the evacuation zone, battling against enemy AI. I preferred the PVE to the PVP purely because it was a longer experience and it was just amazing to battle enemies that would pop out from the environment; it literally felt like in the movies where enemies would sneak out from behind a rock.
After 20 minutes of waiting on twitter, @MerlinGame posted a code word to shout out to win a prize, to which I won, 4 minutes after they posted the tweet. They gave me a signed 18th edition of some concept art for the Facebook game, and since I was there (and because they gave me a prize) I just had to play the game. It’s like one of those RPG games where you would set off on a quest to fight enemies or protect a town or obtain a special object. As time would pass, you could go to merchants and collect rations, and enemies would also drop coins.
Right next to Merlin was SimCity, which I no doubt had to try. The game goes back to basics where you can literally build your own city, and yes, you can make the roads zig-zaggy if you want (I saw one guy do that). Once you’ve built buildings, life will go on as it is, but along the way, you might get people giving you hints on what they’d like or improvements that could be made to the town. The demo ended on a cliffhanger as a meteor shower crashed upon the city, which just made me want the game even more.
After I participated in a 2v2 match on Black Ops 1 (which I did badly at, but the winners gave us their t-shirts since they already had some (thanks again if they’re reading)), I really only had time to play one final game, so I decided to make it Far Cry 3. Now unfortunately, the PC controls are extremely bad when it comes to driving as you’re always crashing into things due to the poor navigation. Playing on an Xbox 360 controller is a lot better; probably since the control sensitivity is a lot less. However the environment in the game was absolutely gorgeous and the map stretches on for miles. If you had doubts about this being open world, please throw them out the window now.
Eurogamer was a blast this year, and there’s no doubt I want to go back next year. Thanks to everybody I met this year and I hope to meet you all again soon.